Glenda SerranoSPRINGFIELD – A 25-year-old Indian Orchard woman who was arrested late Wednesday in the Forest Park neighborhood on felony drug charges was tripped up by the police department’s latest piece of crime-fighting technology, police said.
A mobile license plate scanner mounted on a police cruiser alerted officer Edward F. Cass that the 2008 Lexus SUV that had just slowly driven past him had previously been reported stolen a week earlier, said Sgt. John M. Delaney, aide to Police Commissioner William J. Fitchet.
As a result, police charged driver Glenda D. Serrano, 312 Main St., Indian Orchard, with receiving a stolen motor vehicle and driving without a license.
The list of charges were expanded to felony possession of heroin and crack cocaine, each with intent to distribute after police found drugs in the vehicle and on Serrano, Delaney said.
She was carrying 44 bags of heroin, packaged for street sales, in her coat pocket, Delaney said.
Four other people who were in the car with Serrano were all released.
Delaney said the scanner, a Mobile Hunter 900, is one of two used daily for the past several months by the department. One is used by the auto theft squad and the other by the detective bureau, he said.
The department is seeking to get additional units through grant money, he said.
“They are worth their weight in gold,” he said.
“You can drive up and down a crowded parking lot and it will read every plate and store the information in its databank,” he said.
Delaney said the scanner can read, process and store license plate data from every car it encounters. It does not matter how fast the other cars are going, he said.
The scanners are manufactured by Eslag North America of Brewster, N.Y. According to the company Web site, a scanner can scan as many as 3,600 license plates a minute over 4 lanes of traffic and at speeds of more than 75 mph.
Delaney said a police car with one of the scanners could park along the highway and the scanner would still be able to read every plate going by and determine if any are stolen or unregistered.
“It’s pretty cool stuff,” he said.